Always Yours

by Shelly Jones

  I walk in and it’s like it usually is at six o’clock on a Saturday, so it’s not too busy, but busy enough. I take a seat at the bar and order a beer. Bartender gives it to me and I tell him to just start a tab.

  “Thanks,” I say with a nod.

  “No problem Man,” he says.

  I don’t even know how long I’ve been here or how much I’ve had to drink, but I hear a woman’s voice and I would know that voice anywhere. I turn and I see both of them sitting there giggling, talking and having a great time with two other men. Reagan has got on a dress that looks like it was painted on with her brown hair done up. She looks like a hooker.

  Heidi, well, Heidi is Heidi. Her medium length blonde hair is up in a ponytail, but it’s curled. Her make-up is done so her blue eyes pop. She’s wearing my favorite short blue strapless cotton sundress and white wedge sandals. “What the fuck,” I say out loud. Bartender sees where I’m staring at.

  “That’s Reagan, one of her boy toys, her friend Heidi, and not sure who that other guy is. You know them?” I start to laugh and order another beer and a shot of whiskey.

  “Yep sure do. Reagan, well let’s just say we have a long history together and Heidi, Heidi is my lying, cheating, bitch ex fiancé!”

  “Oh man, here this round is on the house,” he says and lines up two more shots.

  I put my head in my hands.

  “Hey baby,” I hear a voice from behind me. I turn and I see Heidi standing there.

  “Fuck off Heidi!”

  “Oh come on baby, I came to town to bring you back home...”

  “Fuck you. Go back to the little prick you were just with.”

  “Fuck you Eric! You’re coming back home with me where you belong,” she snaps at me.

  “Shut the fuck up Heidi. You’re nothing but a lying, cheating bitch!”

  “You bastard! I am not, I’ve been nothing but loyal to you. I’m sorry I have needs. You weren’t always home, so I had to take care of them, but baby I promise, come back to Chicago with me and we’ll make it all better. Please baby,” she begs me and I want to puke.

  “Go to Hell! Keep the apartment, keep my shit. Keep it all. I’m done, we’re done. Now leave me the hell alone.” I turn back to the bar and finish my beer and start another round. Heidi turns around and heads back to the table. I should just get up and walk out, but I can’t. I need to drink. Drinking is the only thing helping me right now.

  Someone comes and smacks me on the back. “Thanks Josh,” the guy says.

  I look to my right and see Brady. “What are you doing here?”

  “Josh called me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re fucked up and now seeing those two over there....I’d say we need to get you out of here.”

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “Eric, please for me,” she says behind me.

  I turn and I swear my heart stopped.

  “Katie, what are you doing here?”

  “I figured you could use a friend.” She gives a small smile. God she’s beautiful.

  She must have just noticed Heidi and Reagan sitting over there. The look in her eyes was priceless. The bartender handed the waitress a pitcher of beer for their table

  .

  “Hey Jenny, do me a favor and let me serve this to them, please,” she begs a little. The waitress smiles and hands the tray over.

  Brady and I look at one another and we both start to chuckle, as we sit and watch this play out.

  We can’t hear what they’re saying, but I can see Reagan is giving her the ‘fuck off’ look and talking shit. Heidi is getting all tensed and I can tell she’s talking shit too.

  The next thing we know, Katie has managed to dump the beer on both Reagan and Heidi.

  “Did that just happen?” I slur my words at Brady.

  “Yep, our Katie just did that,” he laughs.

  “We need to go and we need to go now,” she says as she comes back, grabs my arm and puts money on the bar for the pitcher.

  I follow them outside. Once I hit the fresh air, the world starts spinning, and everything hits me; the stuff that happened between me and Katie, the two bitches in the bar, and all the beer and whiskey I’ve had to drink.

  “No, I’m staying,” I say, barely able to stand up.

  “Oh no you’re not,” Brady says.

  “No, I’m staying. You guys go on. I’ll be fine!”

  Chapter 5

  Katie

  “Eric come on I’ll take you home. They’re not worth it,” I say grabbing his arm. Brady’s trying to help me with him.

  “No Katie, you’re not the boss of me,” he says barely able to stand on his own two feet.

  “You’re right Eric, I’m not, but please, let’s go home,” I beg him.

  “Katie NO, you don’t get it! You don’t get how it feels! You don’t know what it’s like to have your life all kinds of fucked up,” he says in a drunken slur of words.

  Oh hell NO! He did not just say that to me. My blood is boiling and I just let it fly at him, “Oh My God, you fucking idiot! Yeah, I don’t get what it feels like to be cheated on, but what you fucking don’t understand is that I do know how it feels to have your whole life shattered. I loved you so fucking much and you ignored me. You crushed my heart you asshole! Every guy I dated treated me like shit! The guy I dated guy right before Steve, he beat the living shit out of me, to the point that I had a skull fracture and was knocked unconscious, and had memory loss for a month and to top it off. He beat me so fucking bad that my ribs broke and punctured a hole in my lungs.” He just stars at me with a blank face, can’t tell if he’s even paying attention but my adrenaline is pumping and I feel the need to go off on him, so I can put closure between us. Taking a deep breath, I let it go again, “And guess who was right beside me the whole time? It wasn’t you that’s for damn sure! It was Steve! He was the one who stayed by my side. Steve was there every step of the way because you weren’t! I fell in love with him, because the one guy, the one fucking guy I wanted ditched me all those years ago for the high school tramp! Steve was the one to ask me to marry him, Steve and I found out I was pregnant with our Ava a couple of weeks later. Not you and me, like I prayed to god for every night.” I take a deep breath. “I dealt with two fucking deployments! This last one he was on was supposed to be it. He was coming home to me and our baby. But no! You don’t know what it’s like to have someone come to your house as you’re leaving to go find out the sex of your baby and tell you your husband is dead and never coming back home! Have your heart, your life thrown on the floor shattered, broken into a million pieces, but yet you have to keep moving on because there’s a baby coming.” I take a deep breath and keep talking, getting this all out in the open otherwise I never will.

  “So I’m sorry that you’re in so much fucking pain, but if you think what you’re going through is half as bad as what I’ve gone through, go fuck yourself! She cheated on you, I’m sorry, but your pain is different from mine and if this is how you want to live your life, well then I guess the part of me that still had hope for us was so wrong. Live your life in the bottle of whiskey. Just do me a favor and forget about me. Let me keep hating you, like I have all these years.” I am so pissed. I look over and see Brady just standing there.

  “Why do you hate me?” he whispers.

  Before I could catch myself, “Because Eric, I blame you for the beatings Dean gave me, for loosing Steve. I blame you!” I start to walk away from him. I have to get away from him.

  “Why me, I didn’t do it,” he shouts in a slurred mess.

  I turn and start to laugh, “Yeah in a way you did, if you would have just loved me back then, then I wouldn’t be where I am today. I wouldn’t have these ugly scars from Dean, I wouldn’t be a widow at twenty eight, and I wouldn’t be an ugly mess!” I turned on my heels and walked away from him, just like I did the night of graduation, except this time, I hoped he would have followed me, but instead he sat there on the curb with a s
hocked looked on his face.

  “Wait Katie,” I hear him shout.

  I turn around, “What,” I snap.

  “I’m sorry!”

  I walk back up to him and I squat so I can be eye to eye with him, “Actions speak louder than words! Stop saying you’re sorry and start acting like it!” I stare him straight in the eyes. His eyes are glossed over. Not sure if it because he’s on the verge of crying or if this is how he looks when he’s drunk. I stand up, “Tell Rachel I’ll talk to her tomorrow,” I tell Brady.

  Brady gives me a hug. “Ok, are you going to be ok?”

  “Yep, like always.”

  I turn and walk away. As much as I want to stand there and take care of him, I need to get away from him. I need to prove my point.

  I get into my car and I start to come down from my adrenaline rush. I take a deep breath and put my car in drive and go home. I manage to keep my feelings in check until I get into the drive way and I start to lose it. I open the garage, pull my car in, get out and head inside where I do lose it. If this is what it’s going to be like every time I see him, I won’t see him anymore. I can’t.

  I wake up the next morning to my phone ringing,

  “Hello,” I answer.

  “Have you seen Eric,” Rachel asks.

  “Why would I have seen him? I left him with Brady,”

  “Brady brought him back here, but he’s not here and he’s not at his parents,”

  “Well I don’t know where he is. He’s not here with me.” I hear my doorbell. “Rachel hang on, someone is at my door. It might be Ava.” I walk to the door and look through the peep hole. “I’ll call you back. Eric’s at my door right now,” I say and hang up.

  I open my door, “What are you doing here? How did you know where I lived?”

  “Do you really blame me for everything,” he whispers. He looks like shit, like he’s been crying.

  “Come in,” I say letting him in and closing the door. “Want some coffee,” I ask.

  “Yes please,” he says as he follows me to the kitchen and sits at the counter on one of the bar stools.

  I set the coffee pot up and turn it on. “So are you going to answer me,” He asks. I become aware that I’m in boxers and a tank top with no bra.

  “I’ll answer your question in a second. I need you to go put some clothes on.” I run back to my room and put on a pair of yoga pants and a t-shirt. I brush out my hair and put it up in a ponytail. My face looks like shit, but fuck it. I walk back out to the kitchen. “So,” he says, “Do you really blame me for everything?”

  “Eric, I said a lot of things last night.”

  “Do you blame me?”

  “No. No Eric, I don’t blame you.”

  “Ok, then why did you say that?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t know. My emotions got the best of me.” We sit in silence for a few seconds, and then I go to pour us both a cup of coffee. “You hungry,” I ask.

  “Not sure if it’s wise that I eat.” I can’t hold back the giggle. “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing, you should eat, it’ll make you feel better.”

  He rolls his eyes, but I’m really not giving him a choice. I make scrambled egg, bacon and toast. The guy is eating like he hasn’t eaten in weeks.

  “Damn, this is so good,” he says between bites.

  “Thanks.”

  “When you said last night you were an ugly mess, you’re not, you know that right?”

  “Yes I am Eric, my life is a mess and it’s ugly. The only good thing that has come out of my past few years is Ava. The rest of it is just ugly.”

  He reaches over and grabs my hand. “Mess yes, ugly no.” He takes my hand and pulls it to his mouth and kissing the top of my hand. I get this weird pull in my stomach and between my legs. What the hell?

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shakes his head, “No more saying sorry.”

  “No, that’s for you. For me, I have to. I said a lot of shit last night that I didn’t mean, so for that. I am very sorry.”

  “It’s ok, I deserved it actually. I was almost half expecting you to slap me and I would have deserved that too.”

  I giggle a little “Trust me the thought has crossed my mind a time or two...So can we not have any more of these nights like the last two nights,” I ask him.

  “You know I was thinking the same thing. This is not how I planned these two nights to go.”

  “Yeah me either, well Friday I wasn’t expecting to see you at all. I had no idea you were in town.”

  “Oh wow, I figured everyone told you.”

  “Nope, I was blindsided.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I throw my napkin at him, “No more saying you’re sorry.”

  We both start laughing.

  “How did it feel to pour beer on Reagan?”

  I throw my head back and laugh harder, “It was the most amazing feeling in the world!”

  “Why did you get Heidi?”

  “Oh, because good old Reagan had to say some shit about Heidi being your ex fiancé but you all had plans to get back together and then Heidi said something about how you would never go for a nobody like me. So it was only fair that both of them got it. You sure know how to pick them don’t you?”

  “Yeah, don’t remind me,” he pouts.

  I like this; two adults talking, giving each other crap, no stress or fighting. This is how it should be.

  “This ass-hole that beat you, where is he now?”

  I look over at the calendar “Fuck...” I whisper looking at the date.

  “What,” he asks

  “He’ll be getting out of jail in a month from tomorrow.”

  “Are you scared?”

  “Yeah, I’ll always be scared,” I say looking down at the counter, fidgeting with a napkin.

  The doorbell rings and I jump. I take a deep breath. Talking about him scares me. I have no idea how I’m going to live once he’s out. “I’ll go get it,” I say. I get up, walk over to the door and check the peep hole. I smile and open the door.

  “Mommyyyy,” she screams, and everything is right in the world.

  Chapter 6

  Eric

  I’m sitting at the kitchen counter watching Katie walk out of the room and can’t believe I’m here in her house.

  It took some snooping to find out where she lived, but after everything that happened last night, I had to see her. One, to make sure she was ok, and two, to get some damn answers. It was a kick in the nuts when she told me she blamed me for Steve’s death and that asshole Dean’s beatings. When I asked her about him, I could tell she was scared to death of him. From this moment on, I am going to see that she’s taken care of and protected.

  “Mommyyyy,” I hear coming from the front, followed by Katie’s giggle. That cute giggle she has, it was always one of my weakness when it came to her.

  “Oh Katie, I didn’t know you had company.” I see who I guess to be Steve’s mom.

  “Lucy, you remember Eric Reed,” Katie says holding the most beautiful little girl I’ve ever seen.

  “Oh Eric, yes I remember you. How are you?” Mrs. Tanner says giving me a hug.

  “I’ve been better, but I’ll be fine,” I smile at her.

  “I heard all about it, your father and James play poker together down at the Casino.”

  “Ahh, good old dad and his poker,” I laugh.

  “So are you here to stay or are you going back to Chicago after the wedding?” Wow she just cuts right to the chase.

  “Probably going to stay, there’s nothing back in Chicago for me anymore.” I say looking over at Katie. Katie smiles and her face turns a little red. Yep, my feelings for this girl haven’t changed, and this time I’m going to prove it to her.

  “Well that’s good. I know everyone has missed you dearly,” she says. “Well Katie sweetie, I’ve got to run. We will see you and Ava soon.”

  “Yes you will. Thank you for having her this weekend.”

/>   “Never thank me! We should be thanking you for allowing us to be a part of her life.”

  Katie and Lucy finish their goodbyes. Katie walks Lucy to the door. She comes back still holding Ava.

  “Well I should be going too. I’ll leave you two ladies alone,” I say getting off the bar stool and start heading for the door.

  “Eric?”

  I turn around, “Yeah?”

  “Would you like to come over for dinner tonight? I mean after you shower and get the stink of the bar off you,” she laughs.

  “I would love that. What time?”

  “You want to come over at four? You can help me and Ava cook dinner.”

  “I’ll be here at four,” I smile.

  “Oh, Ava this is Mama’s friend Eric, Eric this is Ava.”

  “Well hello there Ava,” I say and she gives me the biggest smile and my heart melts right there and then.

  “Ok well I’ll see you in a few,” I say opening the door.

  “See you soon,” Katie smiles, and I close the door behind me. Before I can even make it off the porch, I hear her lock the multiple locks on the door. It kills me she’s living here alone with Ava, and that asshole will be getting out soon; I’m going to have to do some looking into him.

  I get home and rush upstairs to shower and get cleaned up. I am not going to let her down. Not anymore. I refuse to make her cry because of me and my bullshit. No more being a pussy and no more running. Not anymore. She wants to be friends, I’m cool with that, she wants to be more, I’m all for it. Whatever she wants or needs, I’m doing it for her.

  After my shower, I throw on my khaki shorts, black t-shirt and Green Bay Packers hat turned backwards. I walk down stairs and my dad is in the kitchen.

  “When did you get home?” he asks.

  “About thirty minutes or so ago, why?”

  “No reason. You never came home last night and we heard Heidi was in town, wasn’t sure what happened to you.”

  “Nope, I’m here. I know she’s here. Katie dumped a pitcher of beer over her and Reagan’s heads, it was awesome,” I tell him and I start to chuckle.